rmalik

Snapguide is Hiring!

Location: All Positions - San Francisco, CA, Full-time, Intern, H1B welcome

Right now we're hiring strong software engineers that want to work on both our web and mobile products. We launched last March and were Apple's App of the Week on launch day. The team is a small group of strong technical generalists that implement features from the front-end to the back-end. We move fast while still making time for code reviews and writing unit tests. Official job description below.

Software Engineer

Responsibilities - Work closely with the core engineering team - Perform code reviews daily and write unit tests for your code - Work closely with our product and design teams to define feature specifications - Ability to move fast and solve problems efficiently

Minimum Qualifications - B.S. or higher in Computer Science (or equivalent work experience) - Very strong in one of the following: Python, Objective-C, JavaScript - Knowledge of relational databases and SQL, preferably MySQL

More Info: http://snapguide.com/about/careers#engineer

Email: careers at snapguide.com

About Snapguide: Snapguide is a free iOS app and web service for those that want to create and share step-by-step "how to guides." The service provides easy to understand instructions for a wide array of topics including cooking, gardening, crafts, repairs, do-it-yourself projects, fashion tips, entertaining and more.

Users are invited to create their own guides using the iPhone app. Snap pictures and videos of your project, add captions, and share your guide with the Snapguide community.

Expected to be a lead engineer. And they currently have $1 mil in angel funding

So are you not a fan of it because it isn't used properly at your company or that it doesn't fulfill your needs?

I am not stating that 37 Signals products are inferior at all. The classical mindset was that people would move from one product to another because of some killer feature or low cost alternative. 37Signals has seemed to flip this idea and challenge the idea of what better software means. This brought me to wonder how other users felt about their products and their motivations for using them. I like your distinction between effort and value. I don't agree at all with the notion of the amount of effort put in equals the amount of value to the user. It simply doesn't work in reality. The effort is also a vague concept as it could be related to development time, marketing, customer service, etc. Effort in dealing with users, gathering feedback and iterating on the product based on that feedback is what gains value for a product IMHO.

thanks rrival, i actually own the 'getting real' book and have a fairly good understanding of how their philosophy affects the outcome of their products. i especially like the mindset when your developing a web application of asking yourself 'would i pay for this product?'.

thanks axod! I feel like this is a valid forum to ask this question. I think some of their products can be emulated quickly in feature sets but it usually is their design and user experience that sets them apart. also i believe their audience is either small businesses (fortune 5,000,000 :D) that don't have resources or ones that would rather not allocate the resources to develop similar solutions.

I did not offer an alternative because I expect that existing customers are already familiar with them and have made their decision to pay for their software logically. I also was talking about their set of products and how the philosophy ('getting real') of their company influences the characteristics of their web applications (less features, interface first, monthly charges, etc.). Thanks for the reasons you use Basecamp, I found them quite useful and succinct. If you were offended by the 'RoR hype' statement, I'm sorry. It just comes to my attention that with the origin of RoR being at 37 signals that they probably get a fair amount of traffic from those who are dedicated to the framework and I'm sure some of those visitors convert to customers...i'm just not sure how much :)

I am already a Basecamp user and am happy with how it's worked for my startup in the past. I know why I use the software but I wanted to understand other customers motivation. Thanks for the advice though.

awesome! or better yet, fuck yeah!